06 · My ramblings
A pilot's logbook records the flight, the conditions and what was learned. This one does the same for the ground. Newest first.
What took me forty years to learn is that the same is true in a boardroom. The founders' optimism, the board's fatigue, my own affection for a team — all of it is the inner ear. The numbers are the panel. When they disagree, the panel wins, and the sooner I act on that the smaller the correction.
None of this means the feel is worthless. A good pilot uses the feel to know when to look. But the look decides. I have never regretted a decision I made from the panel. I have regretted several I made from the seat of my pants, and each one felt right at the time.
Sunday night, four quadrants, one honest line each. That is my panel. I try to fly what it says.
Our turnaround protocol has four parts — strategic thinking, capital restructuring, team enhancement, and a short-term plan — but there is a step zero that never makes the slide. It is the meeting where the founder stops saying “a little behind” and says “we will miss payroll in nine weeks.” Everything useful happens after that sentence. Nothing useful happens before it.
Article III of my constitution says to tell the truth early, especially the expensive kind. I wrote it for myself, but I have used it on more founders than I can count. Bad news does not improve with age. Say the number.
The strange thing is what it does to the other six days. Knowing the seventh is off-limits makes the sixth more productive, not less, and it makes the first one begin with something other than panic. I did not expect a religious discipline to be the best time-management system I ever adopted. I should have.
If you run a company and think you cannot afford a day, try it for a quarter and read the panel. I would be surprised if the numbers argue with you.
Nothing on a term sheet has ever asked me as good a question as that. He was not interested in the exit. He wanted to know what I made. I am going to try to answer that question more often, to more people, and to myself.
So here is the plan. Who I am, in the form of a constitution I can be held to. What I love — God, family and reason — and the four quadrants I use to keep them level. What I do, without the polish of the firm's website. Four cornerstones. And whatever I have to say about speaking, sharing and teaching, which is most of what I want to do with the years I have left.
The rest will be ramblings. I make no promises about frequency. I make one about honesty. Wheels up.
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Article IV says I change my mind in public when the evidence demands it. Send the evidence.